


Silence

by SherlockMalfoy



Series: Sherlock!Wizardverse Drabbles - General [38]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Sherlock (reference only)
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 05:39:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5697091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SherlockMalfoy/pseuds/SherlockMalfoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war, Narcissa Malfoy is granted a small mercy and sentenced to house arrest, at the urging of Harry Potter himself she was given this punishment instead of Azkaban. But the war had damaged her health beyond repair, and she sits in her home, the only comfort she has is the man who helped save her son from the Dark Lord.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silence

Silence. Had he been back home, this would have been the perfect time to start dictation. To begin his next chronicle of his and his brother’s old adventures. Or to delve deep into the heart of a broken PIN and chip machine. Anything to fill the empty space where his wife and son had once been so welcome.

Even the empty shot glass next to the nearly equally empty bottle of good old Dublin made firewhisky could not console him in this hour.

The woman sitting across from him sat with her face a cracked mask of former elegance and poise. Her sunken cheeks, the circles under her eyes, and the scars hidden with well placed glamour spells, were only the surface cracks in the woman’s armor. The true wounds lay inside her. Coursing through her veins where none could cleanse it. Deep in the pit of her stomach and coating the walls of her lungs.

These, he knew, were going to be her final weeks in this world. The poison, the stench of death, in this manor home had become too much. Her body could bear no more of the burden that once an entire perverse group had absorbed and reveled in.

She sat across from him, doing her best not to cry as she looked through the photographs splayed out before her on the table between them. Trying to hold in her joy as well as her sorrow. The joy and jubilation of a mother who’s son has found the happiness of eternal companionship. The sorrow of a mother who could not witness such joys. And yet, the grief of her predicament did not outweigh her contentment. Did not outweigh her happiness of the event she knew would one day come.

“How soon?” she asked him at last, her voice quiet and soft, betraying the tears she fought so hard to keep held back until she would again be alone.

He leaned forward, reaching for the bottle and pouring himself another shot, lowering the bottle all the more. He would not look up at her. Even if he had, he would have only seen her looking through the photographs. He did not need her to further explain her question. They both knew the context in which it had been asked. “Not long now,” he replied.

“How soon?” she repeated, a bit more sternly.

He lifted his glass, holding it up and closing one eye. He stared at the amber liquid, seeing only a dim and blurred visage of the woman before him through his drink. Barely visible, as if through a haze thick amber cauldron smoke. He sighed. “Weeks,” he said, then drained the shot glass in a single swallow. He did not slam the empty glass down, no matter how badly he wished to.

Every sudden movement, every loud and unexpected noise sent the woman into the shakes. Reminded her of the trauma she suffered at the hands of her husband’s master and his followers. It was out of kindness that he kept his temper, his frustrations, in check. “Weeks.”

“And I will never receive news of a grandchild,” she said, and he heard the wavering in her voice. The sadness bleeding through.

“I thought I already showed you what’s in store,” he replied.

“It’s different… knowing an event will arrive in advance and receiving the news as or after it is taking place. The emotional sentiment behind hearing the words from one’s own child’s lips… It is a thing all mothers look forward to. All mothers crave to hear. And I will never experience the sudden rush of delight and jubilation of being a grandmother.” She gave a wan smile, touching her fingertips to one of the photographs of her son and his spouse. Tracing the curve of her son’s cheek, and the large, bright smile she had never seen on his face before. “But at least I can have this,” she said, now looking up at her house guest. “At least I can fade secure in the knowledge that Draco is finally at peace.”

Tobias nodded his understanding. He knew her pain, in his own way. He would never see his son grow up. Never bandage another scraped knee. Never help with studies. Never talk him through his first break up. See him marry. See him have children of his own. It was a parent’s pain, to miss out on a beloved child’s milestones in life. For his part, it was due to the accident that stole his wife and son from him.

But for the woman sitting across from him, for the great Narcissa Malfoy, it was her own imminent slow death that caused such grief. And the knowledge he imparted to her in order to gain her trust in him during the war, that only punctuated the coming loss.

That was why he sat with her now. Why he promised Draco he would look after her until her sentence was over. Until Draco and Harry came back to England. Why he waited with her here in this poisoned house day after day… to help her greet death as an old friend.


End file.
